Reviewed by Tommy Howell for Readers' Favorite

My first impression of Robert Rapoza's The Vilcabamba Prophecy: A Nick Randall Novel was that it was trying to do Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, only better. Told in present day, the story succeeds on clearing that rather low bar and frequently calls to mind other epic action movies. Professor Nick Randall is a controversial archaeologist in his mid-fifties. He's widowed and his wife's tragic death has driven a wedge between him and his thirty-something daughter, who is also an archaeologist. The senior Dr. Randall and his graduate assistants embark on a mission to an isolated tribe to gather more information about a legendary underground city. Along the way, they are captured by corporate mercenaries sponsored by the wealthy industrialist Francis Dumond. As the antagonist, Dumond is suitably villainous and given enough backstory to make his ambitions believable. Dumond also has a contemptuous corporate rival named Kristoph, who is almost as vile. Once Nick is presumed missing, his daughter Sam is called in to help find him. Her expedition meets with a similar fate, but eventually the Randalls team up to figure everything out about the time a nearby volcano erupts.

Robert Rapoza has constructed an elder statesman/action hero worthy of Pierce Brosnan or Liam Neeson in The Vilcabamba Prophecy: A Nick Randall Novel. Dr. Randall endures so much physical and mental abuse, violence, the unforgiving jungle environment, and the even more unforgiving volcanic cavern that the reader wonders how he is still standing at the end of the book. He sustains serious injuries several times and just shrugs off stab wounds, knife slashes, gunfire, and a concussion. Despite all this, or maybe because of it, the action scenes are really where the story shines. A couple of times the story had to backtrack and revisit previous locations to gather more information or necessary items. Sometimes this resulted in a richer tale such as hearing Dr. Randall relate the actual Vilcabamba Prophecy, but at the same time the Randalls just left an unprepared stranger alone in the jungle for who knows how long. Overall, I thought this was a better exploration of Peruvian mythology and the Nazca Lines than the Indiana Jones movie it calls to mind, with the potential to be a great series.